Читать книгу The Pact We Made - Layla AlAmmar - Страница 10

Did I have a happy childhood? It’s hard to say. I suspect many of my memories are compiled from the stories of others. That if I peeled back Nadia’s hand gestures, tossed out Mama’s commentary, and blacked out Baba’s impressions, I would be left with no memory at all save for perhaps some flashes of light or lingering scents. As a result, I put very little faith in my recollections. I’m unattached to them, can go over them with all the emotional connection of someone flicking through a waiting-room magazine. Mona and Zaina would argue about things in our past, each passionately denying or affirming what had or hadn’t happened and in what sequence. And when my vote was sought, they’d huff when I insisted I didn’t remember.

I was rarely lying when I said that.

There are flashes, though; scenes I remember with eye-watering clarity. One vacation in London where Baba took us to a museum because, ‘You need culture. Not just games and fun and shopping.’ I was twelve, and Nadia and I rolled our eyes all the way to Bloomsbury; even Mama huffed when the taxi drove down Oxford Street. Once there, Baba hustled us through the courtyard, not allowing us to pose for the obligatory gate shot: ‘Later, when the rain stops.’ It was before the renovation, before that geometric-patterned, glass monstrosity was installed overhead. He pushed us past Ancient Egypt, past the idols and the hybrid gods with their perfect posture. He allowed no more than a pause before the hieroglyphs. On through to the Assyrians, to something we could claim, as though our family roots were in Iraq and not central Saudi Arabia. We stood before reliefs of military campaigns, of hunting with chariots, of demons and human-headed bulls, while Baba talked about what he knew of Mesopotamia. Nadia got into it; she had wanted to study history at university, and she started arguing with him about the city of Ur, only for him to spin it into a discussion of Ibrahim and Nimrod and a fire that didn’t burn.

Mama and I left them there and meandered through Greece and Rome, past the amputated statues and more white reliefs showing battles and processions. Mama admired the drapes and folds wrapped around the sculptures, the way they looked like real fabric, and I stood over the shoulder of a girl as she sketched what she saw before her – hands and arms, tilting heads, and warrior poses. I watched her hand, the deft and sure movements, and the way she looked up, then down, then up again – drawing as she watched, and watching as she drew. It was mesmerizing, like a pendulum swinging back and forth. Mama took my hand and we stepped into the Parthenon, our footsteps loud in an otherwise hushed room. We went down the line quickly, hardly stopping to look at the chariots or centaurs or horses. ‘They all look the same,’ she said. I allowed her to pull me along; those headless figures didn’t interest me. And then we reached the end of the room and came face-to-groin with a statue of a man, his privates on display, hanging there like forgotten fruit. My eyes went wide, and my mouth fell open at the sight. Mama gasped, this choked sound that seemed to bounce off the marble and multiply. She clapped her hand over my eyes as she urged me to the door, but my hearing was heightened and all the way back to Baba and Nadia, I heard her stifling her laughter.

For the remainder of the day, every time I caught her eye or she mine, we would giggle behind our palms like schoolgirls.

Mona’s husband, Rashid, joined us at the mall for lunch on Saturday. Architect by day, sculptor by night, I liked him from the first time I met him. I hid it well, my affection for him. Even Mona, with all the years she’d known me, with the very way in which they’d met, had never realized it. And on the occasions when he joined our outings, or nights in, or the odd time – like that Saturday, when I became a third wheel – I was careful to remain distant so as not to sound any alarms.

After lunch we went our separate ways, Rashid to the furniture stores while Mona dragged me around the shops. She tried on outfits while I oohed and aahed on cue. I tried on shoes while she thumbed-up or thumbed-down. I endured a makeover at the makeup counter, docilely accepting lipstick and mascara while trying not to think about communicable diseases and whether there was such a thing as eye herpes.

The mall was a series of shop-lined walkways that fed into wide, octagonal spaces where you could pretend it wasn’t as claustrophobic as it seemed. You could imagine you didn’t feel the need to curl into yourself, smaller and tighter, until you were a ball of no consequence. On weekends the malls were packed: high school and college kids in their designer clothes loping from one end to the other; girls in their sky-high heels pouting their lips and flipping their hair; the brunch groups taking pictures of their food and asking the waiter to take one more shot of them. For each group like these you’d find one of the more traditional sort, women in full niqab with their little girls covered up in the hijab and their husbands with the long beards and short robes moving from one end of the mall to the other like it was another kind of pilgrimage.

There was so much there, stimulants bombarding you from all sides: bright lights bouncing off gleaming floors; neon in all the windows, on the people; shouting and laughing and music and shopkeepers asking ‘Can I help you?’ over and over. Try the new fragrance from so-and-so, the new moisturizer from this-and-that. Buy, buy, buy. Maybe if you consume enough, you can fill all those holes in your heart and head and soul.

Too much. It was too much. It attacked me from all angles until a circuit tripped in my brain. And then, a fog would descend and I could pretend, for just a moment, that I was like all the others. Normal and in desperate need of an edible food basket for a friend’s birthday.

They didn’t often believe me, on those rare occasions when I divulged my anxiety; people sought justification, saying it was impossible to feel panic on, say, a lazy Saturday at the mall. ‘Besides, you don’t look like you’re having any kind of attack,’ they’d say, gesturing at how still I was when inside I was malfunctioning. They didn’t understand how, at those times, it wasn’t so much that the panic was taking over as that the calm was evaporating. And I had to reach and grab for it like the string of an escaping balloon. Sometimes I’d catch it; I could bring it back down and hug it to my chest. Other times, it just floated away.

In any case, I had a firm grip on it that day as we walked through the crowds. Past the perfume corridors and café eyes, we wound up at a fro-yo place. Mona took a seat, giving her shopping bags over to the empty chair beside her, and turned to face the people walking by. She liked to be prepared. We’d already run into two former colleagues of hers and a girl we’d gone to university with. Saturday at the mall, it was unavoidable, and Mona liked to see before she was seen.

It was my turn to choose, so I stood in line, looking over the options, while she scanned the faces in the crowd. By the time I’d picked our toppings, she was on the phone. I shoved two spoons in the swirled yoghurt and fruit and headed back to the table. As I slid into the seat on her other side, she mouthed ‘Rashid’ while pointing at the phone and rolling her eyes. I smirked, imagining he was trying to convince her they needed a new coffee table or corner piece. She listened mainly, saying ‘yes’ or ‘no’ but not much more.

And then it happened. Just like in the movies. My spoon even froze halfway to my mouth and my brain stuttered like it had hit a speed bump. Rashid walked by, with that purposeful New York City stride he’d never lost, head down and eyes on the store catalog in his hands. Mona turned to see what I was looking at, her mouth dropping open then sucking her bottom lip between her perfect white teeth. I could still hear a male voice, tinny and far away, yammering into her ear. But it was not him.

It was not him.

Rashid didn’t see us and kept walking. I returned my spoon to the bowl and stared into the crowd. Mona hissed and snapped into the phone before hanging up and dropping it into her open purse. She steepled her fingers, a ring on every one so you could hardly see the wedding band, and met my eye.

It was a long silence. Her soda fizzled and snapped. The fro-yo started to melt. My heart pounded, and I had trouble thinking. Her foot jiggled under the table, tapping mine with every other beat, but she must have thought it was the table leg. The people were loud; they passed in front, behind, and around us. They yelled out orders to friends heading to the counter. They laughed about things we couldn’t hear. They scraped back chairs and rapped knuckles on tables.

‘If that was a colleague or friend, you would have said so,’ I finally managed, but my voice felt like it wasn’t mine, and I didn’t know where the words came from.

‘Dahlia …’

‘Why didn’t you just say that?’ I asked, shaking my head ‘Why didn’t you just say that?’

She mirrored the shaking, her eyes going shiny, and I thought to myself she’d better not cry. ‘I wasn’t thinking.’

‘What?’

She repeated herself, but it didn’t get through. I leaned towards her. ‘Are you sleeping with him, whoever he is?’

The look she gave me was very close to pity. ‘Dahlia …’

I nodded, feeling foolish. ‘How long?’

‘Please—’

‘How long?!’ I tried to keep my voice down, but there was adrenaline and my fingers trembled.

She shook her head down at the table. ‘A couple of months.’

My brain stuttered again. I leaned back in my seat, crossed my arms and covered my mouth with my hand. It was not possible. This was some bizarre dream. My best friend couldn’t be one of those people, the kind we heard about all the time and shook our heads at. Mona put her elbows on the table and pressed her palms to her ears, like she was trying to block out the noise around us or contain her thoughts.

‘You don’t understand.’

‘What’s there to understand? Rashid is perfect.’

She flopped both arms to the table and scoffed. ‘Nobody’s perfect.’

‘Clearly,’ I sneered. ‘I can’t believe you would do this. I honestly can’t believe this.’

She reached forward to grip my hands, but I recoiled. ‘You can’t tell anyone.’

‘Are you even listening to yourself?’ I barked. ‘What is wrong with you?’

‘Look.’ And now she had her ‘be reasonable’ face on, the face that managed to convince anyone of anything, and I turned my head to avoid it. ‘I made a mistake, okay? An awful mistake.’ I snorted, but she continued. ‘Things have been rough with me and Rashid these last few months and I made a mistake. But I’m going to end it, okay?’ I looked at her. She looked sincere. I wanted to believe her, but she felt like a stranger. ‘Just don’t tell Zaina, please. I’d die if she knew about this. I’m going to end it.’

‘If you don’t want to be married, tell Rashid you want a divorce.’

‘I love him.’

‘Give me a break,’ I replied, shaking my head again. ‘You wouldn’t treat him like this if you loved him.’

She leaned forward, eyes darkening. ‘You don’t know anything about marriage, Dahlia, even less about love. You don’t know what my relationship with him is like, so don’t sit here lecturing me about what love means.’

I sat back and crossed my arms, averting my gaze. ‘I’ve been in relationships.’ She made a sort of mocking sound. ‘I have,’ I insisted.

‘Who?’ she replied. ‘That Fahad guy? That lasted like two seconds.’

‘Not Fahad,’ I said, my voice low, my eyes on the strangers passing by, on their way to regular lunches on a regular Saturday at their regular mall.

She followed my gaze, chastened. ‘Hamad.’ She nodded. ‘That was real.’

It had been real. My first boyfriend: we’d met at my first job when he spent a few months interning there. He’d reminded me of Rashid in a lot of ways, and perhaps that was why I’d said yes to him when I’d never so much as entertained the thought of anyone before. He had the same prominent nose, kind, sleepy eyes, and a full mouth that was always smiling. Only his build was different – slighter than Rashid’s tall, broad frame. He was patient and gentle, eager to please and reassure.

Slowly, so slowly, he coaxed me out. His kisses were praising and yielding. His hands the hands of a follower, a supplicant, never demanding more than I would give.

We spent hours in his green jeep, parked in dark, empty lots, at the beach, or on empty side streets. We would talk about life, about leaving Kuwait, about religion and Ancient Egypt. He told me about Istanbul, the only place outside of the Middle East he’d ever been, and I told him about our family trips to anywhere Baba could think of. We sang along to the radio and played thumb-war and tic-tac-toe on the fabric of my jeans.

We discovered that when he kissed me behind my left ear, I’d make a sound I hadn’t known I was capable of. I discovered that my hands didn’t tremble when I wanted to touch a man. I learned not to panic when his weight settled on me, that his hands would not bring pain.

I’ve always had difficulty remembering events of an intimate nature. I can never remember full sequences, only little snapshots. I don’t remember everything that happened in Hamad’s green jeep. Whenever I think of those nights, all that comes to mind is blue cigarette smoke, lights on the console, and his breath on my shoulder when he decided to write on me with a ballpoint pen. I hear the knocking of innocent limbs against dashboard, his hum against my pulse, and the interjections of the Turkish singer blaring from the stereo.

What we had (love?) was art, and we made each other art.

At one point I told him what had happened to me.

I see that conversation in snapshots too. Wretched silences. Bursts of rage, fists on a black steering wheel. ‘It wasn’t my fault.’ A dead sky. ‘I know, but …’ Tears dripping onto the backs of my hands. ‘It wasn’t my fault.’ A prominent nose in profile, sleepy eyes looking out of the sunroof. ‘I know, but …’ Hand moving, fingers inching across the center divide. ‘It wasn’t my fault.’ Fists on thighs, clenched. ‘I know, but …’

A couple of years later I was reading the newspaper, and my eyes drifted over the back page. His name was there, in bold black print, his much-too-young age in brackets next to addresses for the men’s and women’s funerals. Over the next few days I would see the small article about the accident, and the picture with the charred green jeep flipped on its back, and everything would feel terribly, terribly pointless.

I shook the recollections from my mind and returned my eyes to Mona. The anger flared in me again, like the catching of a candle’s wick. ‘It’s not about love,’ I said. ‘It’s about respect and affection and the fact that he doesn’t deserve this. And even if I don’t tell him or Zaina—’

‘If?!’

‘It won’t change the fact that you did it. That for months, you lied to him, to all of us. I mean …’ I shrugged my shoulders. ‘What kind of person does that?’ Her eyes were shiny again, but my sympathy was nonexistent, and I couldn’t look at her anymore. I stood and grabbed my bags.

‘Please don’t tell anyone,’ she said, but I was already moving.

The worst thing about knowing of Mona’s infidelity was that nothing changed. For the whole of the following week, she continued to participate in our group chats with Zaina as though the betrayal meant nothing. She sent pictures of the record player Rashid had purchased (her husband squatting at its side and pointing at it with a big, goofy grin) because he’d suddenly decided to start collecting vinyl. She cracked jokes and suggested evenings for us to come to her place.

I’m lying. That wasn’t the worst part. It was her nature to avoid an issue by pretending it didn’t exist. We had that in common, I think. But this thing … the idea of adultery had always been very far away, an alien concept I never needed to concern myself with. But then it was there, a stranger sitting between us. I didn’t know what to do with it. I kept quiet in our chats, but then I thought that seemed suspicious, so I overdid it. I spun plates on sticks while it seemed like Mona couldn’t care less. I obsessed over the real-life implications of it.

I used to try and picture Mona and Rashid having sex. The first time was the night of the wedding, after they had walked out of the ballroom – him in his gold-lined black bisht and ghutra, her in a body-hugging lace number cut low in the back. Later, when I was home, in bed, with hairspray-stiffened hair and a full face of makeup I was too tired to wash off, I wondered how they would proceed. She’d told us, me and Zaina, that she and Rashid had done ‘everything but’ in the time they’d been together: she’d told us about the first time she blew him, in the front seat of his car, and how she’d cried after because it was the first time she’d done that and it wasn’t supposed to happen like that and what would he think of her; Zaina and I could recount, with disturbing accuracy, every detail of their first kiss – right down to the song playing on the radio when it happened (Meatloaf’s ‘I’d Do Anything For Love’, which we teased her about mercilessly); we knew when and where she’d let him touch her. We’d even been go-betweens when they fought, a two-headed Switzerland shuttling messages and apologies back and forth.

She’d said she was saving herself for him, or rather for whomever she’d end up marrying.

Would it be fast and frantic? Or slow and gentle, Rashid showing off his stamina? Would she cry that first time? Would he be patient when she tensed, or would the frustration show on his brow, in the line of his lips, the strain in his neck?

But now there was this nameless, faceless man to contend with. This nameless, faceless man pressing down on her, taking what she’d decided to give so freely. This usurper, this pickaxe scraping at their marriage. I hated him. I hated him for catching her eye, for worming his way in, for being whatever she thought Rashid wasn’t.

I chewed over her insistence that she loved her husband, worrying at it like a chipped tooth. Intimacy and trust, I’d learned from a young age, were very different from sex or what passed for it in our society. It was easy enough to divorce one from the other, but for her to have that trust with Rashid, to say she loved him, all while giving her intimacy to someone else … I couldn’t fathom it. My brain refused to process it. No, that’s wrong. My brain had no trouble comprehending it. The part of me that struggled was something else. Something mobile. Something that slithered from my mind and sat heavy on my sternum.

Baba walked around his little kingdom, hands clasped behind his back like a general inspecting his troops, and admired the green shoots and little buds sprouting all over. His skin was darker than usual from hours spent in his garden while the weather was agreeable. He stomped up and down every so often, pushing to test the firmness of the dirt. If it was too soft, I heard him grumble about the houseboy over-watering – ‘Leaves the hose on and goes to talk on the phone, that donkey.’ Every so often he called to where I sat in my white plastic chair, soaking up the sun, and said something like, ‘Look how tall the tomato plant has gotten,’ and I would nod and smile like an indulgent parent. ‘The radishes will start popping up soon,’ he said, squatting low to the ground for a better look. When everything was deemed satisfactory, he pulled up a chair by me, sinking into it with a ‘Ya’Allah,’ and a happy sigh.

We sat in comfortable silence for a while. Unlike Mama, my father never felt the need to fill pauses with mindless chatter. I inherited that, and some of my fondest memories of him contain no words – just blessed silences. That morning wasn’t one of them, though.

‘So nothing came of that boy then?’

I kept my eyes closed, feeling the sun through my lids. ‘I guess not.’

‘Your mother hasn’t heard from them …’ I couldn’t tell if that was a statement or a question; either way I chose not to respond. ‘It’s fine.’

‘I know it’s fine.’

‘I think she has another one lined up for later this week.’

My heart pounded, once, twice, all jangly, and I suddenly felt like crying. ‘She hasn’t said anything to me.’

‘You know how she is. She likes to wait till the last possible minute to tell you. I think she thinks it makes you less likely to find a way to escape.’

‘I don’t know why she thinks the situation is so desperate.’

He chuckled, folding his arms over his gut. ‘Your birthday is just around the corner.’

‘Have you approved of the guy?’ I asked, pushing my fingers through my tangle of curls.

‘On paper, yes.’

I nodded; it was important for things to line up on paper. ‘Do you know when they’re coming?’

‘Thursday, I think.’ The houseboy passed us on his way to the gate, talking on his phone, and Baba took the opportunity to yell at him about over-watering and how he’d break that phone if he kept doing it. The houseboy pocketed it, nodding like a bobblehead, and scurried out the gate. Baba leaned back in his seat, attention once more on me, and said, ‘Shidday hailich.’

‘What does that even mean?’ I replied, sitting up and turning to him. ‘Can you stop and think about that phrase for a minute? Really think about it. What exactly am I supposed to “try harder” at?’

‘You know—’

‘No, Baba, listen. You and my aunties and Mama, you spit out that phrase like it’s no more than a punctuation point, like it doesn’t cut me every time I hear it. How am I supposed to try harder at something I have zero control over?’ I said, slicing the air with my hand. ‘I sit here waiting for someone to choose me. Not only does the mother have to approve of me, but then I have to appeal to the guy. How can it work with odds like that?’

He accepted my mini-rant with a pensive nod, looking back out over his garden. My eyes followed. Was he thinking, like I was, how much simpler it would be if life followed such sure rules as seeding, watering, and reaping? Was he wishing he could control all our lives with such certainty?

It had worked with my sister. Nadia had played by the rules; she had never so much as had a personal conversation with a man until she’d met the one she would marry. Their marriage was arranged by Mama and her sisters when Nadia was twenty-three, and the first time she’d met Sa’ad had been at our house when he’d come to see her. Baba had given him an ultimatum; he could talk to Nadia on the phone for one week, by the end of which they would either make their engagement official or sever contact. Four months later they were married. That was fifteen years ago; Sa’ad had given her a beautiful house and an easy life, and Nadia had given him two sons and a daughter.

It had all worked out exactly as it was meant to. As sure as the cycles Baba went through with his garden. Almost too easy, some would say, which is probably why they got me.